A couple of months ago, one Australian record company found itself on the back
foot, assuring consumers that the Australian release of Natalie Imbruglia's
new album did not include the controversial copy protection that was seeing
a number of European consumers complaining about defective discs. From what
I've read, it seems that Universal is intending to make no such apologies
and plans to "protect" everything they release. Ross has pointed out
a
Fairfax article
which discusses the wider copyright implications of such a move. It's a pity
it doesn't seriously discuss the techniques and effects that will be used in
this protection but at least it's bothering to raise the question of consumer
rights. Another piece over at
newscientist.com looks at this copy protection
from a new perspective, that of Philips, the co-creator of the CD format
itself. They seem none too pleased about companies releasing products which
don't conform to the strict CD definition and are considering barring
"protected" CDs from bearing the CD logo. They are also considering producing
a CD burner which is smart enough to work around the copy protection added to
a disc. I guess it would be a pretty bizarre situation if the record companies
then sued Philips for circumventing the copy "protection" that they had added
to the format Philips created. My guess is that the public will get smart and
continue doing as they wish, just as they have done in buying DVD players free
of region encoding.
